1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a lane change control system that controls vehicle lane changing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-12989 describes a lane change assist system that assists lane change of a vehicle. The lane change assist system uses a camera to capture an image of the road ahead of the vehicle in a direction of progress and identify white lines on both left and right sides, acquires a lane width from the white lines, computes a curve radius and the like, and calculates a target yaw rate (see [0023], [0024], [0025], Equation 2, [0053], and [0054] in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-12989).
Paragraph [0016] in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-12989 describes that the vehicle can be guided from a current driving lane to a lane change target lane by performing steering control that takes the lane width into account, thereby enabling lane change to be assisted.
However, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-12989 does not consider cases in which objects are present either in the lane change target lane or in the vicinity of the lane change target lane. There is accordingly room for improvement since it may not be possible to perform lane changing appropriately, which could, for example, alarm an occupant of the vehicle that is attempting to change lanes (that is in the process of changing lanes).